How recent conflicts are shaping India-GCC ties

The conflicts in the Middle East over the last two and a half years have not only wreaked extraordinary death and destruction across the region, but they have also caused serious disruptions in global energy, commerce and technological connectivity.
Attacks in the Red Sea and the Arabian Gulf have severely restricted exports from Gulf Cooperation Council states of oil and gas, urea, sulfur and helium, harming global industry, specifically the fertilizer, health and semiconductor sectors. More recently, in response to US-Israeli attacks, Iran directed its missiles and drones at GCC energy and digital facilities.
India’s energy security and its substantial economic ties have been jeopardized, its connectivity projects have become nonstarters and the welfare of its 9 million-strong expatriate community has been threatened.
But these regionwide catastrophes have compelled the examination of new ideas and initiatives so that the GCC states and their partners can contend with such challenges more effectively in the future.
With their location alongside two vital maritime corridors — the Arabian Gulf and the Red Sea — the GCC states are at the heart of regional economic activity. They are a hub for regional and global energy, trade and technological connectivity and are central to global supply chains. According to OPEC projections, the Middle East will be the principal source of hydrocarbons for Asian markets over the next several decades, while supporting the green transition and net-zero targets to be met across Asia by 2060-70.
India is expected to be the premier market for conventional energy from the Gulf. Thus, it has a direct interest in supporting the pipeline projects that are being planned to reduce the deleterious impact of regional chokepoint disruptions. Indian entrepreneurs should therefore actively participate in the pipeline projects that will link energy supply centers across the Arabian Peninsula with ports such as Yanbu and Fujairah. A gas pipeline from Qatar to Turkiye via Iraq is also under consideration. In fact, the recent conflicts have encouraged the GCC states to expedite the consideration of regionwide oil and gas pipeline integration.
But the outlook in regard to connectivity is even more exciting for Indian participation because transregional projects are under consideration that reflect “a new trade architecture.” Thus, land transport links from GCC states — from the ports of Fujairah and Khor Fakkan in the UAE and Jeddah, Dammam and Jubail in Saudi Arabia — will cross into neighboring states, linking with the Suez Canal in Egypt, Aqaba in Jordan and the ports of Latakia and Tartous in Syria.
Another opportunity for Indian companies is the massive expansion of the railway network linking the GCC partners with their neighbors. The Gulf Railway is expected to be completed by 2030. Following this, opportunities for several new projects will open up, such as a direct link from Kuwait to Iraq and then to Turkiye. Also, Turkiye, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Jordan have agreed to revive the old Hijaz Railway, which will go from Aqaba to the Turkish border, with a spur joining it at Deraa in Syria from Jeddah, Makkah, Madinah and Riyadh.
Iranian attacks have also threatened regional digital connectivity. The GCC states have, over the last two decades, committed themselves to digital transformation. In several sectors, they are already on par with the achievements of developed countries. They have prioritized the development of digital infrastructure and connectivity and have extensively adopted the use of artificial intelligence. During the war, digital facilities were targeted in the UAE and Bahrain, causing outages in banking payments and corporate and consumer services.
Digital planners in the GCC and India — a major partner in the region’s digitizing projects — will draw lessons from this experience about the layout of data campuses, the protection of undersea cables and the need to ensure fuel reserves and dedicated generation capacity for the power systems. But what will not change are the advantages the GCC states have in the area of digital development: capital resources, vast land spaces and the facilities to provide the huge quantities of fresh water and electricity that the hyperscale facilities need. In fact, AI will be central to the diversification and development of the energy, transport and digital corridors in the GCC.

One opportunity for Indian companies is the massive expansion of the railway network linking the GCC partners with their neighbors.

Talmiz Ahmad

There are two principal lessons of the recent conflicts. One, that we are witnessing wars on connectivity in which energy corridors, maritime routes and digital infrastructure are the new battlegrounds that will decide, as the Egyptian scholar Umud Shokri says, “who moves, who trades, who connects and under what circumstances.”
The second lesson is that nations are crucially interdependent. The GCC’s oil and gas powers the global economy. Its petrochemical products are crucial for the global health sector and the manufacture of semiconductors required for the world’s smartphones, computers and data centers. And its urea is required to manufacture fertilizer for the global agriculture sector. Thus, global energy, food and digital security are linked with each other.
The recent conflicts have revealed that national interests are not served by war, however powerful the contending states might be, but only through diplomacy that pursues win-win solutions. Thus, the principal role that India can play in the Middle East is to partner with other like-minded nations in promoting an inclusive regional security architecture. This is what the region urgently needs and this is what India is well equipped to deliver.

• Talmiz Ahmad is a former Indian diplomat.